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You know that abandoned building on 29th and Guadalupe, just across the street from Taco Shack, in between Ruby's BBQ and Spider House? You know, the one whose east wall has been a graffitti artist's dream for over a year?
C'mon! The one where Steaming Wolf Penis played an informal performance during Snake By Snakepit?
Alright, well, over the past couple weeks you may have noticed local artist Justin Prince painting a mural of various periods in television and cinematic history. This comes courtesy of the guys down the street at I Luv Video, who are planning a move around the corner into what was the former Plasma Center just a few years ago.
The move has been given a tentative deadline of "sometime this summer" and by the looks of it, it's in definite need of a couple more months of improvement. We were assured that this is strictly a move and that the current store will continue to run as long as possible before the store relocates. The Airport Boulevard location will remain the same. No word yet on what will happen to the old location or its neighbor Ecomat. Cross your fingers: no more near-campus, high-density housing...
PS. Justin, if you're reading this, Madeline wanted you to know this.
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"Cross your fingers: no more near-campus, high-density housing..."
Why not? If there's any neighborhood where high density housing might actually work, it's near UT and in downtown. It sucks that it's so expensive, but what can you do about that? The whole city is getting expensive.
Oh yeah, on topic: I love I Luv Video, but when I am back home in Austin (born and raised there, but live in (ugh) NYC now, I always go to the Airport location.
Yeah, true dat. Opposing high-density housing near UT is about as retarded as you can possibly get. Considering we're now never going to get light rail running down Guadalupe, the only hope in improving the ability of students to get to school is just picking them up and moving them closer (no, shuttle buses aren't going to do it - fewer people ride those every day as they figure out that they're stuck in worse traffic than they would be if they drove).
Absolutely - increase the number of students walking on foot to give Spiderhouse, I
Even better: high density housing with retail (new home for Eco-mat, others?) underneath.
Reduce car-traffic and grow upwards.
So is the Airport location closing once the new shop is open? It's unclear from the story.
The kids that are moving into these new apartments are walking--but only to and from class. They drive everywhere else! Guadalupe between 29th and MLK has already become just as much of a clusterfuck as Lamar & 6th.
I agree that these kids need to go somewhere, but keep the construction in West Campus if it has to happen...I oppose high-density, near-campus housing around North Campus because if it continues, i'm afraid it will start to look a lot like West Campus --bad roads, constant construction, noisy, trash everywhere...
heyzeus--
The Airport location will remain exactly the same.
now vulcan and i luv can shoot bb guns at each other across the intersection
Please, please, open a south of the river location I Luv.
pd,
Again I dub thee possible retard and probable troll. Traffic's not any worse there than it was 10 years ago (possibly better, in fact).
Guadalupe is exactly the right place for big buildings. And students will walk to more stuff when retailers open better stuff for them to walk to after they see all the students within walking distance. It ain't rocket science.
Mmmmm...for those of y'all in favor of this high density retail on bottom/living on top bullshit I ask you this:
-How does the sweat from Will Wynn's balls taste?
The character of the neighborhood is not preserved with 5-10 story tall retail/residence big boxes. Those who move to these definitely don't walk, unless it's under 10 blocks. Cap Metro is not being used by nearly enough students.
The city of Austin should lift the ban/law not allowing collectivos.
m dumbass, the only troll on here is you. It ain't rocket science that pd is the author of this post and deserves a right to defend his statements (as oppossed to using every available oppurtunity to spout pro high density growth agenda on every topic that has a concievable tie to city planning).
West Campus is a high density disaster right now. The only thing being built is overpriced, cookie cut "luxury" apartments that only have half as many parking spaces as there are bedrooms (and thus twice as many SUVs on the street) and are owned by commercial real estate firms that prey on unsuspecting college kids who have no idea what their rights as tenets are (or what might be a reasonable rate for an apartment).
By character do you mean strip malls? I personally prefer pedestrian-friendly vertical mixed use. The way out of our present car-dependent culture is up.
apv,
I know damn well that West Campus will be a lot better with high-density buildings and people walking places than it was with low-density crap and much more parking.
And, honestly, the low-density crap had worse landlords than these shiny new buildings have got.
Don't like density? Stay the hell away from the center-city. If you preferred the decaying garbage that was there when the neighborhood groups were keeping a lid on heights, I recommend you move to some old northern city where people aren't moving back downtown. Like Philadelphia or Detroit or somesuch. Must be paradise, huh?
mdahmus,
Is paradise to you a cluttered skyline with plenty of traffic, because, come back to me in 2008-2010, when all these condos are completed and tell me how well Austinites/Texans/Americans gave up their cars and walked all over this city...I hope you're right and I would be pleasantly surprised if that's the case.
pd,
Given that the alternative is the same students living in Far West or Riverside student ghettoes, and a good chunk of them driving to close to campus every day, then hopping those stupid shuttle buses (the remainder riding same stupid shuttle buses all the way), yes, it wouldn't take much for this development to be better than what's there today.
I apologize for my last comment to you, by the way. Way too hostile - I had you confused with an earlier commenter.
"Mmmmm...for those of y'all in favor of this high density retail on bottom/living on top bullshit I ask you this:
-How does the sweat from Will Wynn's balls taste?
The character of the neighborhood is not preserved with 5-10 story tall retail/residence big boxes. Those who move to these definitely don't walk, unless it's under 10 blocks. "
So...the better option would be for us to just spread out indefinitely into the aquifer. Let's just become Houston or Dallas-even those cities are starting to build high in the center city because people are getting sick of driving so far to get to work.
And as for "the character of the neighborhood"-it's a neighborhood, not a museum. Neighborhoods change-and they should. If nothing changed we might as well go back to living in caves.
As for the parking issue, they should put a cap on amount of parking for every new building-even I agree that the kids in West Campus shouldnt be driving as much as they do now. So make it as difficult as possible for them to drive and to park and force them to leave the car at home for four years.
There's a difference between city planning and social engineering, or at least there should be. For every bedroom there needs to be one parking spot + visitor and staff parking.
I don't care if big/ugly student ghettos, I mean apartments, are built in Austin, I just don't want to see the city council bending over backwards to accommodate such crap.
Besides the fact that apartments are being built around campus doesn't mean we are safe from building over the aquifer, that's not where students move anyway. If there wasn't enough space around campus students would be moving north or across the interstate.
And since all of this downtown condo building has taken place (+ or - 4 yrs) it's not like building over the recharge zone has seized. In fact I would say building around southwest Austin has increased in those last few years.
Dear person who showed Madeline's note... you made her day that you acknowledged it. Signed, her mom
"There's a difference between city planning and social engineering, or at least there should be. For every bedroom there needs to be one parking spot + visitor and staff parking."
No, BS. Parking should be provided at the amount the developer wants; no more. If there's not enough for the residents, there'll be an incentive to market to kids without their own car (or bike riders or whatever). Part of this needs to be allowing an occasional for-profit parking garage in the area too.
Requiring parking _IS_ social engineering; it's basically mandating suburban sprawl.
They got the ugliest fucking building EVER in the world right beside there. Have you seen that thing? It looks like a giant turd. Hideous.
Somebody keeps throwing rocks through their windows too, which I fully support and love them for. I can't wait for the assholes to move into the giant turd and have to repair those windows at their own expense. That's gonna be wonderful.
I thought high-density housing is good...??? Strange thing to say, unless you love sitting in traffic... Whatever
I think the pro-density peeps should be stating that "affordable" density would be good. Unfortuantely, students and many professionals can not afford the current density options available. What UT student is going to be able to afford a $3K/month rent tab?
mDahmus,
Agreed, the developer should build as much parking as they deem fit. It is when the city council steps in and arbitrarily deems that there shouldn't be enough parking spaces at a retail/residential site in order to encourage using alternate forms of transport.
People moving into these apartments probably want parking, so the developer has an incentive to provide it. Like you said, the city should not be in charge, it's the developer through the consumer who is demanding parking.
Spaces or not..............PEOPLE WILL DRIVE!
If I'm paying out the nose for one of thses places, I most definately want a parking spot for every car in my household. You know, not all of us have family that live downtown. Some of us travel and have family that visits from out of town. We also have friends that we would like to have over and I wouldn't expect them to pay $10 to have to park some where around where I live downtown. At my place would be better. I can just see my Mom driving around downtown now looking for an open lot on a Saturday night in the pouring rain and then seeing her hoof it 5-6 blocks to get to my high rise. Sounds great.
Uh, Stew, are you living in some kind of alternate universe? Today the city mandates a lot of parking per residence; and the only place where maximum parking was even considered was for downtown office buildings.
The law today, in other words, mandates suburban sprawl.
I can just see my Mom driving around downtown now looking for an open lot on a Saturday night in the pouring rain and then seeing her hoof it 5-6 blocks to get to my high rise. Sounds great.
You just made my day, Grape Ape. All those days standing in the rain waiting on a bus to get home to my shithole on the outskirts are all worth it, just for this.